Garlic planting

Today was the day to plant the garlic.  The beds are getting filled this week and the first one I did was the garlic bed.  The kids have been helping with the bed closest to the piles of soil.  They're awfully cute with their little shovels.  I started by seperating the cloves.

I had 2 different varieties that I got from wegrowgarlic.com.  They  are a couple that started a garlic growing business in Wisconsin.  Since they are in a cold growing area like I am, they are a good choice.  I can't order garlic from a warm weather source, as it won't do well in my New England winters.  This first year I used grocery store garlic.  I've heard that many times it is grown in warmer climates.  Although I certainly got garlic, the heads were quite small. 

Once the garlic is separated, I choose the largest cloves for planting.  With the 2 varieties I planted this year, they were all huge cloves.  Out of 10 heads of garlic I got only 1 small clove for eating, the rest were planted.  In all I planted about 60 cloves of garlic, which will give me a good amount for next year and some to plant again next fall.  I'm not really sure yet how much we go through in a year, so we'll have to see if that will be enough.  We're pretty heavy garlic users.

This is the bed after planting.  I planted Music at the end closest to the shed and German Porcelain closest to the house.  This will be topped with mulch in the next day or so.  My favorite mulch is chopped leaves and grass.  I put the bag on the lawnmower and mow up some grass and leaves, then put a 4-6 inch layer on top of the bed.  This composts down very nicely over the winter to feed the bulbs and protect them at the same time.  My neighbor loves it, because I come and mow up her backyard leaves.  She has a lot more leaves than I do, so it makes us both happy.